- All right.
Full disclosure.
I'm actually a pretty big Sony fan.
I've been using their Discmans when I was a kid.
I've been using their headphones and earbuds
when I was a kid, as well.
And then I was always like a PlayStation kid growing up.
PC you know, number one, but PlayStation solid backup.
And today we've got their M9 Gaming Monitor.
They kind of went all out with this thing.
It's 4k, 144 Hertz, 27 inches.
So you've got about 160 PPI
for all those of you that care about pixel density.
And apparently it's got full array local dimming
with 96 zones, which, you know,
that's not as impressive
as the like 500,000 zones we've seen
on some TVs and other like really high end displays.
But, 96 zones on a 27 inch screen
is actually not too bad.
The other really cool thing
about this is the stand
is kind of interesting.
So I'm really curious
to see how it works
and how it looks.
Cool, so yeah, this is the weird stand I'm talking about.
This part seems pretty normal, right?
But apparently the legs
like this is forward
and then the legs go back.
Power brick, giant power brick, actually.
Cool. One concern.
There's like no cables.
So we have a power cord
and a power brick
and the stand.
And then there's the panel.
Am I crazy?
It still kind of sucks for everyone else
who buys this as a gaming monitor
and not for their like their PlayStation,
because like, I don't know.
I kind of expect at least one HDMI
or a display port cable in the box.
It's really not the end of the world.
I do have extras,
but if you're doing a first time setup
or say you just moved and you sold everything
and you need to buy everything again
it would be incredibly frustrating if you brought your PC
with you and then you bought this monitor
and then you go to hook everything up
and you suddenly don't have a display cable.
I'd be pissed.
Cuz then I have to make a whole extra trip
to the store just to buy something.
Not everyone does this.
Some people just do like a panel on the front
but I like their foam that they've got here.
- [Adam] ] Same foam as the PS5?
- Is it?
- [Adam] Yep.
- Wow, Sony's just reusing everything.
For IO, you've actually got a pretty good assortment
of in outs here.
We've got a headphone Jack.
Even though this thing has
two speakers on it as well,
for those of you who actually use your monitor speakers
not many of you, but hey.
- [David] And then three USB-A slots,
a USB B slot,
and then you've got a USBC port
which can also act as a display port.
So if you go to hook up a laptop
to it or something, no problem.
You got one display port and then two HDMI 2.1s,
which is pretty nice when you'll use more than one.
I mean, I guess you can have like your console hooked up
and then you can also have your PC hooked
up right at your desk or something.
- [Adam] That's the same analog stick as a PS5.
- [David] Is it?
Wait what?
No.
(Adam laughing)
- This is what I'm actually surprisingly
most interested in.
I just think it's neat.
- [Adam] - Oh my God, is that the same as a PS5?
- Yeah, look, it's pretty much a PlayStation.
So it hooks up basically the same
as majority of other monitor stands go.
You just kind of hook it in and then it's on there.
Just go like this.
Cool.
Oh.
So that just kind of slots on
and then you've got two screws.
Looks kinda weird, right?
Well, let's see.
- [Adam] ] Huh?
(Adam whistles)
- [David] Kind of works.
It's not as stable
as some other monitors I've seen, but the reality.
Actually, yeah, that kind of bothers me.
Here's a more fair representation
but it's still pretty wobbly.
Yeah. It's not bad.
I kind like the look of it overall.
Actually I haven't even seen it from the front.
Let me spin it around.
I'm trying so hard to make sure
my new short circuit hoodie
doesn't scratch the screen.
Yeah, you'd see the legs.
I don't know.
It's okay.
I think it's kind of a weird design
and I'm not like for it or against it.
I guess my bigger issue
is that there is like no swivel.
Like all you can do is go up and down
and the up
I really don't like that at all.
It's weird because if it goes down
then it also comes forward.
Like just a little bit.
I'm pretty sure.
- [Adam] Oh yeah.
- [David] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You don't really get a lot of flexibility with this stand.
And so therefore I would totally recommend
a Vesa mount every single time.
You're just gonna get a lot more use out of it.
So as much as I don't like the stand
I do like the rest of the shell and everything
and the rest of the monitor's actually pretty good.
It's 4k 144 Hertz.
One of the other nice features is that on the back of it
it's got this navigation nipple
that we're big fans of
and then a dedicated power button right below.
Some of the other features it has is the HDR 600
to go along with the full array local dimming.
It's also just got your standard G-SYNC
for variable refresh rate, which is always nice
specially if you're running on PS5
and it can't actually do some of the higher frame rates
or refresh rates that you want it to do.
The other kind of nice thing
about this is that it's got about 95% coverage
of the D C I P three color space.
95% is quite a lot.
And for the most part
the stuff you're gonna be watching is an SDR or BT 2020.
So whatever,
it's fine.
Cool. So let's fire this thing up
and see if the 96 dimming zones are actually enough
for a screen this size.
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A couple minor things that we notice when setting
up the monitor is that the stand
is actually kind of a pain in the ass
because you can't swivel or anything like that.
You've gotta move the entire thing
just to plug anything in.
And I mean, it's just the spacing of everything too.
Some of the ports are like right behind
where this stand comes in.
So you've gotta like move it all the way up.
And even then it's a bit of a tight squeeze
depending on which display you're trying to plug in.
Otherwise it worked pretty well outta the box.
One issue is that the bezels are kind of big around the top.
It's nice and thin on these outer bezels
but the inner ones, just like, I don't know
that always kind of bothers me me.
Same with the bottom.
If you've already got a plastic chin here,
just raise it up.
Just cover that.
I want my windows to go all the way
to the edge of the screen.
That's like, my dream
is a nice, like, full screen display.
Oh my God.
What a dream is that?
One of the really cool features
that I do like though
that we've seen on other monitors
but haven't been able to always get it working
because we kind of get products a little early at times
it's got an adjustable menu inside.
Like it's got its own software.
So instead of having to actually use the navigation nipple
which is fine,
that's actually not a terrible idea.
But, you can change everything with the click of a mouse.
Oh my God.
I love it.
This is also the dream that I dream for.
And I don't understand like,
look I can just change brightness on the fly.
Oh yeah!
I'm a huge fan of this.
You can you change gamma and stuff?
(beeping sound)
That's really cool.
This is actually really impressive.
You can change the aspect ratio directly on the monitor.
Giving fast response time.
I don't know how much this adjusts things.
Cool.
Turn local dimming on off or ah, high.
Oh, let's check out the local dimming before I do anything.
Windows HDR sucks, but you know, whatever.
Yeah. The Villa man, I love this test.
For those of you unaware,
full array local dimming
is when you've got different zones
on the display
that act as different like dimming zones, basically.
They'll either get brighter
or dimmer depending on the HDR content being displayed.
The problem with a lot of other
like HDR 406 zone monitors
is that they're usually edge lit
and they're just these vertical stripes for HDR.
And it looks terrible.
You'll have this one thing lit up
but all of your brightness is up across this whole stripe.
With full array local dimming zones,
what you get is like,
oh this one speck is bright in this corner.
Let's brighten that one corner
instead of the rest of the screen.
And it's not bad.
Like, so what's happening is as this moves around
each of the dimming zones will activate
and become brighter or dimmer.
This is the absolute worst case scenario
to show off local dimming.
And it doesn't look amazing in this kind of scenario.
But the reality is when you're playing games
or watching content
12 by about eight dimming zones, eh
it's not gonna be too bad.
I don't think you'll actually notice it all that much.
This is HDR
and
there's not a ton
of crazy big highlights going on.
- [David] but I also don't notice any dimming zones.
In a good way.
I'm not seeing like entire squares
of brightness come on.
We'll probably see it more in gaming.
So we're gonna try gaming in a sec here.
With HDMI 2.1 we're gonna get 10 bit color,
120 Hertz,
4k,
and without any display stream compression.
Or at least I'm pretty sure it does with that bit rate.
So we should be good to go.
And let's fire up some kind of game here.
They're not great, but they're not the like
worst monitor speakers I've ever heard.
(lively music)
Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong.
That's not very good.
But like most monitor speakers kind of suck.
So while these are a little tinny
they're actually not the worst I've ever listened to.
As you can see, it's got RGB on the back
but the lighting is really minimal
and it kind of goes directly
into this exhaust work on the back.
So a lot of the light probably
just goes in there instead of
of bouncing off and going
against the wall
or your desk
or anywhere else you might hope to see the glow.
Yeah, it looks pretty nice.
You can totally see the flashes up here.
The HDR is okay.
But the reality is
unless you want really good HDR on a monitor,
you're gonna be shelling out a lot of money.
For instance, I've just gotten
my Alienware QD-Oled finally.
And that looks amazing when it comes to HGR content
but it also costs me an arm and a leg.
So, the one other big difference though
is that this is still 4k, 144 Hertz
which is pretty nice at this price point.
It's about $899.
So you're looking at something that
is actually expensive, but affordable.
If you're looking for a high refresh rate 4k panel.
Yeah. The biggest problem is that these flashes here
they look overblown,
which isn't the end of the world.
It probably looks better than it normally does.
But something with an even better HDR feature
is going to look much nicer.
Especially when you get those like much smaller
dimming zones like we have on mini LED or on OLED.
This is still a pretty good display though.
Especially at the price point.
It looks pretty good on a PC.
And I suspect that's what most people
are gonna buy it for
because the value's actually not bad for a PC monitor.
But if you wanted to it's got a bunch
of PS5 features like auto genre switching.
So if you're watching a movie
it'll switch to a different mode.
And if you go to a game,
it'll switch to a different mode
probably do stuff like turn game mode on.
On top of that,
it can also do variable refresh rate for your PS5,
which is pretty sweet.
And it's got auto HDR tone mapping for PlayStation as well,
which might look really good.
So we might get a much better HDR experience on our PS5.
These are the cans, eh, what are these H9s?
H9 headphones?
Adam already checked these out though.
And he said he really likes them.
So I'm pretty excited.
They seem okay.
Oh, they're pretty comfortable.
The following settings have been optimized.
Boom.
See, it's already doing the auto adjust HDR stuff.
The following settings have been optimized for your TV.
Make adjustments if necessary.
Sweet. So then you can change it.
Uh, I'm gonna,
as soon as it clips.
Okay. How do I want it?
Press the
oh, until it's barely visible.
All right, well there
it's technically barely visible.
I can still just see it.
No, I want the ultimate PS5 experience.
I gotta keep the cans on.
- [Adam] I know.
We're gaming now fellas.
Where do I even go?
The field of view is killing me.
- [David] Oh, that looks pretty good.
It's not super HDR-e.
Oh, those rockets look kind of right though.
What's can I like boost higher than that?
(video game music)
Oh, that flash and the lightning looked pretty good though.
- [Adam] You're good.
- [David] Hold to activate.
(game controller clicking)
Oh, that looks cool.
That's nice and bright.
Yeah. This looks pretty sexy.
Okay. What we really wanna check out though
is the actual differences that this will do
on a PlayStation versus a PC
and that's the auto switching stuff.
So we're gonna go to media
and see if it changes the mode or anything.
Eh, yeah, there was some screen flicker and stuff.
So when you actually change modes
with a lot of these monitors or TVs,
a lot of the time
they won't actually tell you anything like,
oh we've changed this one.
Some of them do
but a lot of them don't.
But you will notice like a flicker
or your screen will go dark momentarily.
And then it'll come back on.
I think that overall $900 for a 4k,
144 Hertz,
full array local dimming
with 96 zones,
like that's not bad.
I think the price point is decent.
But at the end of the day
I would probably pick a different monitor, personally.
I don't need the pixel density
of 4k a hundred at 27 inches.
The KVM is a really nice feature as well.
If you've got say, a laptop,
but not a gaming PC.
But you do have a PS5.
So you can have your PS5
and your laptop hooked up to the same display.
I don't know if I'd buy it partially because of the stand.
I think that if you do buy this thing
you should definitely just get either a wall mount
or a monitor arm to put it on
because I really really don't like the stand
for a number of reasons.
Otherwise though, it's not bad.
I think you're getting a pretty good value for it.
And it's probably one
of the best HDR experiences you're going to get
in a monitor at this price point.
I think that for Sony's really first kind of foray
into the gaming monitor space,
it's not bad.
And you should definitely include it
when you're trying to figure out what monitor to buy next.
And if you're trying to figure out what video to watch next
maybe look at Adam's video
on the headphones that we got.
The H9s, that one's pretty,
these are pretty good too, apparently.
Are they good, Adam?
- They're fine.
They're pretty good, you know?
- [David] ] Yeah. Okay.
- [Adam] Watch the video. No, I'm not gonna tell.
- Yeah, there you go.
Watch the video, watch the video, thanks for watching.